Gendering Popular Culture: Perspectives from Eastern Europe and the West

The Reader is a useful guide to understanding the meanings and contradictory effects of popular culture and gender today. The texts in the collection reveal how popular culture is a dynamic terrain where gender norms and identities are simultaneously produced and contested. The authors (from Eastern and Western Europe as well as the USA) explore such contemporary issues as the role of pop music during the Cold War and the post-socialist transition, representations of procreation in Hollywood science fiction, the visibility of women film-makers, the rise of domestic femininity in the post-communist world and the retreatist scenarios for women in the USA, as well as changing models of masculinity. The analysis of a variety of media forms and popular cultural practices such as TV series, soap operas, Hollywood romantic comedies, rock music and “chalga” music, sports, and advertisements raises serious questions about the effects of globalization on gender and sexuality politics in the first decade of the 21st century.